


The Wine Bowl

by Minutia_R



Category: Chronicles of Prydain - Lloyd Alexander
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-30
Updated: 2013-09-30
Packaged: 2017-12-28 01:24:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/985987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minutia_R/pseuds/Minutia_R
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Once they saw that Hen Wen was a white pig and not a golden sheep--and not even oracular any more--they put down their weapons and apologized quite nicely.”  Eilonwy frowned.  “Or at least that’s what they were doing as far as anyone could understand them.  They </i>might<i> have been reciting a poem about anemones and primroses.  Some people just can’t admit when they’re lost.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wine Bowl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kristin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kristin/gifts).



“What do you mean I missed the fight?” Taran complained. He had once had his fill of war and more, but it was years now since he had drawn a sword. These days, after a hot summer day wearing a crown and royal robes, dealing with petitioners and listening to his advisors squabble until he had a headache, he’d begun to understand why Flewddur used to leave his kingdom and take up wandering as often as he could.

“There wasn’t a fight, not really.” Eilonwy sat on the windowsill and swung her leg, making her scarlet skirts swirl. Royal robes hadn’t slowed her down any, but she was more used to them than Taran was. “Once they saw that Hen Wen was a white pig and not a golden sheep--and not even oracular any more--they put down their weapons and apologized quite nicely.” She frowned. “Or at least that’s what they were doing as far as anyone could understand them. They _might_ have been reciting a poem about anemones and primroses. Some people just can’t admit when they’re lost.”

Taran looked sharply at her, but if she was referring to any particular incident from their adventures together, she chose not to elaborate on it.

“Anyway,” Eilonwy went on, “there’s to be a feast for them tonight.”

“What? They tried to kidnap Hen Wen! Why can’t we just turn them out?”

“One of them’s a bard,” said Eilonwy. “You can’t turn out a bard. Anyone would think you were raised in a pigsty.”

Taran glowered. “I was raised in a pigsty.”

“Yes, but you don’t have to act like it. Queen Teleria always used to tell me the best thing to do with unwelcome guests is to give them plenty of provisions and speed them on their way.”

“I still say--” Taran wrinkled his nose. “What’s that _smell_?”

“Oh, well, back on Mona, sometimes when the fishing wasn’t good the poorer fishermen would cook up this porridge with oats and seaweed. The only time the palace cooks made it was when we had _particularly_ unwelcome foreign guests. Queen Teleria used to tell them it was a local delicacy.” Eilonwy smiled. “Somehow they never came back.”

\--

There was a potter in Commot Merin again. There would always be a potter in Commot Merin, no matter how many times it was burned to the ground.

“Isn’t it lucky that the clay here is so good?” If anyone else had said that, Taran would have been furious, but Gwenlliant daughter of Goewin said it with a wry twist to her mouth; her father Llonio had also been killed fighting the forces of Arawn Death-Lord.

Gwenlliant wasn’t the artist that Annlaw Clay-Shaper had been, but she was always trying new things, experimenting with pigments and different shapes for flasks and storage-jars. She redesigned her kiln every few months, it seemed, and her eyebrows were permanently singed from the failed experiments. And so it was that Taran made the journey to Merin with a wine bowl that he’d gotten from the foreigners in his saddlebag. He’d traded a serving-dish made by Annlaw Clay-Shaper for the wine bowl, and it had cost him a pang in his heart as well, for the dish could never be replaced. But though the secrets of craftsmanship that Gurgi had rescued from the treasure-house of Arawn were all well and good, the craftsmen and women of Prydain needed innovation as well, and Taran had never seen anything like the wine bowl. It shone so and was so hard that at first he had taken it for metal. It was burnished red like the sunset, and the fish and other sea creatures figured in black seemed to swim along its edge in truth.

“Incredible,” breathed Gwenlliant when he handed it to her. She held it up and turned it to catch the sunlight, and her eyes lit with a brighter fire, half wonder at what was, half speculation at what she could make of it. For a moment she reminded Taran so strongly of Llonio that his breath caught painfully in his throat. “I wonder how they get it so smooth? And the black--could that be done by mixing iron shavings in with the clay? Would that account for the hardness? Did you ask them?”

Taran shrugged apologetically. “They didn’t speak our language. And they were warriors, not craftsmen.”

Gwenlliant grunted, ill-satisfied with his excuses, sounding like no one but herself. “The shape should be possible to duplicate, anyway.” She tapped it with a finger. “Elegant.”

“Yes,” said Taran. He looked at the corner of the cottage where her wheel stood, and a trough of fresh clay. A sudden longing seized him--he couldn’t wander Prydain as a bard the way Flewddur had done, nor could he stay in Merin for more than a night; it had given his steward fits when he proposed the journey as it was. But he might sit at the wheel for an evening, and feel the clay live beneath his hands again. If Gwenlliant allowed it. She was not his old master, after all. “I wonder--if I might--?”

Gwenlliant laughed. “I’m sure you don’t sound so diffident when you're handing down judgements, or commanding armies.” She waved a hand in the direction of her wheel. “Help yourself.”

\--

In the bustle of homecoming, and the hundred things Taran had to attend to that were far too urgent to wait for the morrow, but on no account could have been dealt with in his absence, he had hoped Eilonwy wouldn’t notice what he’d carried home from Merin. The foreigners’ wine bowl he had left for Gwenlliant to study, and in its place he had returned with--what he found Eilonwy holding in her lap when he finally retired to their private rooms for the night.

“What is it?” she asked brightly. “A nest woven by a one-eyed songbird?”

“It’s meant to be a wine bowl,” said Taran, nettled. “I tried to make it in the foreigners’ style, but it’s harder than it looks, and I haven’t worked in clay for--”

“I’m sure it’s a very good sort of wine bowl,” Eilonwy reassured him. “Especially for someone who’s apt to drink too much. The way it tilts, once the wine is poured he’ll think he’s half drunk already, and maybe he’ll be more moderate.”

“But if it’s really so ill-looking,” Taran went on, “you can throw it in the midden, for all I care.”

“Taran of Caer Dallben,” said Eilonwy, “you have the most peculiar ideas.”

\--

Legends speak of the treasure-house of High King Taran and Eilonwy, his queen. It is said to have contained armor and weapons made by masters of the craft, harps bound and strung in gold that never played a false note, tapestries of colored wool woven by the finest weavers in Prydain--and other, rarer things, vessels of gold and silver made by artists from across the seas, jewels of Fair Folk work. It is only one or two of the oldest stories that mention--and modern scholars are apt to consider this a mistake in copying an even older manuscript--a ragged banner hanging in the proudest place, clumsily stitched with the figure of a white pig. And displayed underneath it, a somewhat lopsided clay wine bowl.

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't sure whether to give Gwenlliant a matronymic or a patronymic; Llonio is a more recognizable character and a patronymic would probably be more historically accurate (to the extent that history has anything to do with Prydain), but on the other hand Eilonwy uses a matronymic and Gwenlliant daughter of Goewin has that alliteration going for it.
> 
> The wine bowl that the foreigners gave Taran looks a little something like this:
> 
> (That is Exekias' Dionysos Cup.)


End file.
